Something incredible has happened, for the first time in many years, there is an x86 microarchitecture out there that is going to pose a very real, and very significant threat to Intel's monopoly in at least one major segment. I am talking of course, about AMD's brand new Zen architecture, powering the all new Ryzen processors that are all set to hit the market by the end of this month. This isn't a marketing buff or a nomenclature gimmick, the comeback is very much real. AMD is competitive again in the x86 scene and from everything we have heard so far, its going to massively undercut Intel in terms of pricing, marking the end of an era in computing (and the beginning of a price war).

A monopoly is broken: AMD's highly competitive x86 Ryzen processors to enter the battle at a fraction of Intel cost

Amidst status quo shattering applause, AMD's Ryzen processors will enter the arena this month. If you are a reader of Wccftech, you would know that we have already talked about pretty much all of the details concerning Ryzen. 8-core performance leaks have been coming for a long time now and they have not disappointed. The much cheaper Ryzen processor is able to go toe to toe with Intel's $1000 chip which presents a very obvious problem for chipzilla considering the price difference. Intel will have to respond either by introducing new SKUs and/or by dropping the price of existing units. The public can see that the $329 Ryzen processor can do the job just as good as a $1000 Intel CPU, which means that the premium they have been charging for as a monopoly tax will quickly have to be removed.

A price cut from Intel, is therefore anxiously anticipated. Even if one does come however, it will be too little, too late. Intel has been enjoying the high throne for quite some time now and is quite confident in its margins. All this however, is liable to change with the arrival of Ryzen CPUs. The only question is whether AMD can maintain supply at rates this cheap, and the answer to that, is given further down the article for anyone that wants to look.

We also saw that the processors have a high overclock potential, dependent almost entirely on the VRM of the board and the cooling system used. If a single core can hit 5 GHz on air, ignoring the effects of electromigration, then you can realistically expect cherry chips to overclock up to 3.8-4.2 GHz on all cores with a high-end cooler and a mature enough revision of the Ryzen processor. A Ryzen chip with a decent overclock will be able to give comparable performance to (and possibly even beat) Intel’s $1000 i7-6900 in optimized scenarios and match the i5s in gaming performance. So in short, we know the following things for sure about Ryzen:

The eight core Ryzen will have comparable optimized/threaded performance to the $1000+ Intel piece and comparable gaming/unoptimized performance to the quad-core i5 pieces. This is because any unthreaded application will rely mostly on the clock rate, at which Intel is currently ahead.It will have overclocking potential.Intel should still be in the lead in terms of pure IPC.It will be half as cheap as its Intel counterpart (tentative pre-order pricing is at around $499). This is just a ridiculously good value proposition that no enthusiast will be able to ignore.Lower attach and upgrade costs of the AM4 platform as compared with Intel's Z270 platform.

This is very good news for any tech enthusiast waiting to go with a Ryzen build. All this information points to the fact that we are looking at a very real AMD comeback on the compute side of things. Ryzen is not only going to be a game changer for the company in terms of its profitability (in the long run) but also a status quo shattering product for the x86 industry at large. Keep in mind however, that caution is advised as far as raw gaming performance is concerned. Games usually are not capable of utilizing a lot of threads and instead rely on high clock rates, applications like server/enterprise and rendering farms however are going to benefit from the arrival of Ryzen a lot. That is the industry where it is truly going to be a game changer, providing Intel-level performance at 1/2-1/3 the cost.

For details on the complete Ryzen lineupFor Ryzen gaming performance For Ryzen compute performance